The unique selling proposition (USP) is one of the cornerstones of marketing. There has to be a reason people do business with you and not someone else – a winning difference that sets you apart and makes you the only real choice. Traditional marketing advice will have you lock yourself in a cave for weeks listing all of the features of your business, translating them into benefits, then somehow finding that one compelling point that will differentiate you from everyone else you could

In Want to Break and Remake WordPress? on the Blog Herald, I summarized this year’s WordPress/Google Summer of Code, an exciting annual project that brings together the top WordPress Community experts with college students from around the world dedicated to making and breaking WordPress so we all benefit. When I read the cute announcement by Jane Wells of Automattic on the WordPress Development blog, I thought of all the amazing things that have come out of the past WordPress Summer of

Over the last 10 days I’ve been running twin polls on two of my blogs - ProBlogger and TwiTip - asking readers whether they’d prefer more Twitter Followers or Blog Readers. The overall results were fairly clear - 84% of those who responded people would prefer more Blog Readers. I expected this result but was curious when starting the poll to see if there’d be a difference in the responses by ProBlogger readers to TwiTip readers (given the topics of the blogs). Here are the

By now you’ve most likely joined Twitter (and if you haven’t, you need to, pronto!). Twitter is not only a great place for businesses and marketers, but it’s also a great place to spruce up your writing skills. Yes. You read that correctly. Twitter can make you a better writer. Here’s how. Twitter forces you to be concise If you’ve ever used Twitter, you know that you have 140 characters to say whatever you want to say. Now keep in mind, I didn’t say 140 words—or even 140

Looking to improve your blog writing? Today Shannon Paul ( @shannonpaul) from Very Official Blog gives her very official tips on the topic. I love blogs. Before I started blogging seriously, I read a lot of other blogs and was very engaged as a reader. I commented a lot and began honing my ability to craft a statement quickly in response the ideas presented in the post. I’m still very engaged with other blogs in this way. However, if I’m being totally honest, most blogs I encounter

Christine Vogensen sells adorable wall art for children’s rooms. While her basic business model is to sell wholesale through sales reps and boutiques, she was hoping to see some action from her retail. Her original information (submitted to me in 11/08 - thanks for your patience, Christine!) showed that she was generating traffic with PPC, but that she was realized $0 sales. When I called her recently to see if there was any new developments on the sales front, the answer was an